How to create a coconut using particles
Lets start with a few hairs and go into Particle Edit Mode. Use the comb brush to move shape them along the surface. Make sure to include some hairs that don't move the same direction as the others or it will look too boring.
I played with the material settings a bit and used a slight colour variation from root to tip which is controlled by the thickness. 





I will then add at least one other particle system, so that we can control the few brighter ones separately from the darker base. By combining three systems on top of each other I got the result above.






(Could use some more tweaking but for demonstration purposes...)